As the First Balkan War shattered Ottoman control over the region, Albanian delegates gathered in Vlorë and declared independence, raising a red flag with a black double-headed eagle. Ismail Qemali became the first prime minister of a fragile new state whose borders would be contested for years, but the declaration marked the birth of the modern Albanian nation after nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule.
The Assembly of Vlorë convened 83 delegates from across Albanian-inhabited lands, many traveling through war-torn territory to reach the small coastal town. Ottoman power was collapsing rapidly under the joint assault of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria in the First Balkan War, and Albanian leaders feared their homeland would simply be carved up among the victors rather than granted its own identity.
Ismail Qemali, a veteran Ottoman-era statesman then in his late sixties, pushed through the declaration with urgency bordering on desperation. The flag raised that day — a black double-headed eagle on a blood-red field, based on the banner of medieval hero Skanderbeg — remains Albania's flag today, one of the most distinctive in Europe.
Independence did not mean security. The Great Powers at the 1913 Treaty of London recognized Albania but drew borders that left large ethnic Albanian populations in neighboring Kosovo, Macedonia, and Greece — a source of regional tension for the following century. Still, November 28 became Albania's Flag Day and Independence Day, celebrated with particular fervor given how narrowly the nation avoided disappearing from the map entirely.